Fastest/Most Suddenly You've Ever Seen A Fighter Go Downhill......

Castillo fall after the Hatton fight was pretty dramatic. In fact, his fall might have started after the first Corrales fight (but we didn't noticed in the second fight since Corrales decline was even more drastic).

 

It's not about good fighters or bad fighters or medium fighters........it's about guys who suddenly- irrespective of their level- suddenly display a sudden and marked decrease in their ability to perform at a given level, whatever that level was.

Williams was a Euro-Level guy who lucked into a title shot after he beat Mike.....he never got close to that level again or his old level..... and went from a fringe title contender to a total punching bag.

 

Likewise Hatton post-Castillo. He never looked that good again. Floyd beats him and all of a sudden dudes like Lazcano - a guy Hatton beats for fun 2 years prior- has him on the verge of a KO loss, he's getting marked up by Paulie and Pac made him look like he'd never boxed in his life.

 

I thought he looked terrific vs Malignaggi so I'm not too sure about this one. Yes he looked bad vs Lazcanno but it wasn't that shocking considering he was coming from his first ko loss. He looked awful vs Pac, this us true, but how much of it was due to Pacman simply being on another level?? Hard to day with an alcoholic...

 

He ran around for 11 rounds after a guy he'd have cut to pieces in 4 or 5 rounds about 2 years beforehand.

This is the point.........Hatton won, looked good in parts, got the stoppage.

There was a time he'd have cut that guy to pieces in short order.

The decline from the Castillo stoppage was marked.........he beats Castillo, then he loses 3 of his next 5, in essence.

That's how I look at it........in 2005 Ricky was fringe pfp with the Zoo stoppage. By 2008 he was borderline to being shot.

 

I dont agree. As was said, he looked as good as ever against paulie. He just chewed more than he could handle woth pac and PBF (and he looked pretty good against pbf)

 

I think it's pretty clear that his chin left him midway through his career.

 

Think Frampton has been going down for awhile.

 

Roy Jones is the poster boy for this.

 

Came on here to say this.

Went from dominating every round against every opponent for a decade at middle to light heavy, then stepping up another two weight classes to fight, and dominate, a heavyweight champion.... Followed very next match by struggling and getting routinely KO’d by journeymen level guys back at his natural weight class. I don’t think there’s a better example.

 

Maybe Enzo Mac the thing being that he hadn't got this reputation as a technical superman but he didn't have a weight-crash issue either, that being what likely triggered Jones decline. After he got beat by Haye, he literally got blown out by anybody with a pulse. Not just losing, but being brutally battered down.

Oddly, Roy was one of the fights he DID win.

 

Jeff Chandler had one of the most sudden and shocking declines of all time, even moreso than Roy I'd say. He entered his fight with unheralded Richie Sandoval as one of the best P4P fighters in the world (with only one loss coming in an over-the-weight fight), looked like an uninspired statue all night long before finally being stopped in the last round, and then never fought again.

 

Nino Benvenuti fell off rather sharply over the last year of his career, but I'd say that there were warning signs that preceded it - he had been plagued by cuts and injuries over the previous year, which suggest that his long career was already beginning to take a toll on him.

 

Yep. His performance in the nMonzon rematch screamed shot to pieces, and he didnr looked that bad a few fights before

 

Jeff Fenech's decline was incredibly quick.

 

I know the thread topic emphasized declines that we've actually seen, but here are a few steep ones from decades past.

-Gunboat Smith won a string of fights in 1913 and early 1914 (including decisions over Sam Langford and Jess Willard) to establish himself as a consensus top contender, but after losing on a controversial DQ to Georges Carpentier in France, he seemed to descend into near-journeyman status.

-Frank Klaus spent years cleaning up the post-Ketchel MW division and establishing himself as the universally recognized champ. Once he'd finally achieved this, he lost twice on KOs to unheralded George Chip and then retired.

-Tom Heeney plummeted straight downhill after losing his title shot at Gene Tunney.

-Paul Berlenbach had an impressive run as LHW champ with multiple wins over HoFers, but he faded quickly after losing the title.

-Babe Risko was never considered a great MW champ to begin with, but he only ever won one more fight after losing the title and suffered numerous KO losses.

-Freddie Steele had amassed a record of 120-plus wins against only 3 losses when he was bombed out in the 1st round by Al Hostak. He retired the next day, made a single (losing) comeback attempt years later, and then retired for good.

 

As I recall, he didn't look good in his fight just before Hatton.

I think outgrowing 135 pretty much spelled doom for him, since he had always been largely reliant on his ability to outmuscle naturally smaller opponents. I think the same held true for Hatton as he attempted to move up to 147.

 

Ive not read the thread yet so im sure hes come up already but RJJ after dropping weight is first that springs to mind

 

Good one.

 

1st or 7th?

 

Edit: I just read it wrong on Wikipedia~: Hostak beat Risko in the 7th and Steele in the first.

 

Enzo and Hatton were two modern examples I thought of, too.

MTF

 

Nigel Benn won a career defining fight and then pretty much turned to crap afterwards. Mitigating circumstances, but nonetheless.

MTF

 

Benn had been KO'd twice by 1990 or so. He looked - not washed up- but exposed to a degree in that he had reached his level. This basically happened twice. He loses to Watson, goes to the USA, beats everyone up, is fancied to bash Eubank, loses. Seems finished.

He then goes on this really great run once he moves up in weight. He doesn't lose and that's versus Sims, Galvano twice, Malinga, Eubank again, Henry Wharton etc.

McClellan had been brought over to bash Benn up and we know what happened. He makes two defences thereafter and looks fine.

Next thing we know, he's losing to Malinga, Collins twice, and he's talking like he's got a mouthful of marbles.

Then in 2019 he tries a comeback, to fight Sakio Bika, but they wouldn't schedule it.

 

I wholeheartedly believe Watson was just much better than Benn, at any point. Eubank too, despite going 0-2 vs him. I thought their first fight was an awful decison, and he was thrashing Eubank in all aspects before the end of their second fight. It's pretty much a given that after Calzaghe, Ward, Toney and Roy, SMW drops off significantly. I think Watson was better than Kessler, Eubank, McClellan and Benn.

 

I have seen fighters just seem to lose their spark after a title challenge loss. Fighters such as Jose Stable, George Araujo and Hurricane Carter just seemed to lose something after not being able to grab that brass ring. But none as bad as Victor Paz. If you never heard of the name, that's OK, and to be fair, I never actually saw him fight either. I just remember him from reading about him at the time and his streaking record. He fights for the vacant title at 130 against Korean Yung Soo Choi (I may be wrong in that name) and Paz is the South American and Argentine champ at 130 with a record of 56-1-1. Man, he sure seemed like a sure thing on paper. Well, he gets stopped in 10, but it is after that loss that made me wonder every time I would see a result. After the loss he went 17-45-4. Talk about a downward spiral.

Also, back in the '80s there was this kid that looked sharp named Dana Roston. A featherweight hotshot that was being featured a lot on ESPN. He had just beaten this journeyman-type fighter named Rocky Garcia and screams into the post-fight mic, "I'm tired of fighting this s**t!" Well, perhaps ESPN didn't take too kindly for that ambush, as they were bringing him along nicely with a 14-1-1 record. He got his wish. His competition went up and he went straight down. After the Garcia win he went 2-28-1 the remainder of his career.

 

Eubank wasn't great. What he had was a great chin and self belief and some power. Never the biggest hitter, but sharp and accurate.

He knew how to close things out if he got somebody hurt.

But he wasn't a great boxer, he fell asleep in fights, allowed himself to get outworked and could be thrown off the scent.

His son, of course, is a bum.

 

Roger Rouse after losing his title shot vs. Dick Tiger is another notable example.

 

I remember reading Chandler had painkillers shot in his shoulder before the fight and didn’t feel like his usual self during the fight. He supposedly had cataracts too and was planning on retiring anyway.

 

Chandler was definitely not Chandler in the Sandoval fight, but it didn't help his case that Sandoval fought like a man possessed.

Having said that, Chandler on his A-game, like when he beat Johnny Carter, would have beaten Sandoval.